kitsunerei88

I saw Vienna Teng perform last week. I've loved her music for... nearly twenty years, if not outright twenty (I know the range of when I first heard her music, but can't pin down the details) (wild to realise it's been that long, tbh, but time truly does keep marching on), and it was absolutely lovely to hear her performing live. She told stories between songs, mostly about the songs and where they came from, sometimes about her family. (The anecdote about her bio-child Did Not Like her music as an infant was delightful, as was her going "I have not written any songs for her, somehow, but" and then singing a silly little ditty about how "before going on an adventure you gotta try to pee", which is very appropriate for a young child and also deeply relatable as an adult.)

She played a lot of songs everyone knew (Harbour, City Hall, Stray Italian Grayhound, Level Up), one cover song that she said she plays "because I want more people to know about this group" ("The Lost Words Blessing" by Spell Songs; it's lovely and I am delighted to have been introduced to them this way), a couple songs I swear I've only heard a handful of times (Riversitter being the one I was like "ohhhh I have heard this Like Once" about most notably, though We've Got You live is so impressive and lovely) and some songs she says are going to be on the new album she's almost done with. (This is not a full set list, though I took notes. She also kept being like "okay, what do you want to hear?" and being surprised by how many different songs people shouted out.)

She also sang what she described as a "bike sea shanty" as her encore, which I really hope is going to be on that new album, because it was a delight and such a fun surprise for what she wanted to end with.

Absolutely delightful evening, so very glad to have been able to see her. <3 Very excited for when her album comes out, because I really enjoyed the songs she played which should be on it.



Work has been happening, just with a lot of "okay do we even have the pieces/materials we need?" and "did we know about [obstacle] when the plans were drawn?" questions slowing things down. On Thursday we spent all day attempting to seem busier than we could be. Yesterday we were allowed to go home at 10am (normally the hour when we take our mid-shift break) because (a) we didn't have much we could do and (b) the foreman wasn't feeling well.

I'm grateful for this, because we've got an early nor'easter hitting this weekend (it's hitting Boston harder, but the wind has still been striking here, and the rain should hit in earnest this afternoon) and I'd spent the work week wavering on the edge of Feeling Shitty for pressure-change migraine reasons. Around noon yesterday the migraine actually hit, and I grumbled about it for the daylight hours before going UGH THIS SUCKS once the sun set. It broke at, y'know, roughly when I usually go to bed. Nice to be able to make dinner, now that food was an option, while I contemplated how weird it was that twenty minutes ago light was hellish and now it was fine. Ate food, brushed teeth, went to sleep. Slept in this morning until the late late hour of 7am, feel pretty much fine now? Migraines are so weird.

Next week there should be more work at work, though, since we're supposed to be getting more materials delivered on hopefully-Monday.



Otherwise everything's felt quiet, mostly. It's a bit...

Well. Once I count it up, it's only been ten weeks since I got the hysterectomy? Which is not actually that long, all told? Like, yeah, I could go back to work at six weeks (it took seven, because of schedules), but.

Doesn't mean everything was done healing at that point, y'know? Doesn't mean it's all done now, honestly.

There's no real way to see what's going on internally. There have never been any sutures I could see, no scars left externally, and that was intentional but also makes it so much easier to forget that, yeah, school's started up again and so has work and so I'm busy most days of the week (today is the first day in two weeks where I haven't had Somewhere To Be in the morning, and that's... just the pattern of things... I can skip out on aikido on Sunday mornings, sure, but then I'd not see any of that cluster of friends like at all...) and it's a bit like, well.

Of course you get home from work and don't want to do anything else. Of course the body insists on rest. (There's ways to turn that to metaphor, sure, but in this case it's deeply straightforward and literal.) It's a hard thing to do, isn't it? To have Something To Do every single day, or nearly so? Especially when, in this world that presses for one to be doing all the time, even rest is a thing to do, to set aside time for.

I wish it didn't take effort to carve out time to read and write and rest, but I'll take heed the reminder as the seasons turn and we move from summer's heat into autumn's chill. This is the beginning of the months where it's easier to stay inside anyway, to reflect and consider and be quiet. Shall do my best to listen to the body and the land both; they're interconnected, after all.

Three Views of the Dawn

One

When I think of stories about the dawn, the most memorable one is from when I was fifteen.

I woke in the unlit pre-dawn where the sun had not yet kissed the earth and no colors turned the world radiant.

The person who’d awoken me—a new friend, slightly older than me, wrapped in a cloak he was about to pass to me—told me that he’d seen nothing on his watch, and as I rose he returned to his sleeping back to doze away the remaining hours before dawn came and the campsite roused in full.

I used no light. I needed no light. The stars and moon above were bright enough to limn the world in silver and shadow, and my eyes knew the shapes I sought. There were many people sleeping under the open sky, for it was late summer up by Point Reyes and there was no need to worry about rain, and even the biting insects were few and far between. I picked my way between them, careful not to disturb them, as I made my way out of the field where we camped and down the path to the place where we’d chosen to keep watch.

I settled on the dew-strewn ground, the cloak wrapped around me to keep out the damp. It was still warm from his body, a welcome gift in the night; California may be known for its warmth, but it is still dry, and so the sun’s heat fades in the dark. Stillness intensifies the sensation as well, as there’s no movement to ward away the chill, and there is nothing to do but experience the world.

The watch is a meditation in that way.

I sit in and with the world. It is a practice I have learned, in various ways, since I was nine years old and was first asked to find somewhere to sit in the woods and simply be. It was not framed as meditation; that, I first learned formally when I was thirteen. The two can be the same: you sit and open yourself and the world passes by, and you try not to fixate on thoughts inside because if you do that you are not aware of the world around you.

I find it easier when I’m in nature than if I sit in my room. Built spaces are not necessarily quiet, and their noises are the mundane distractions of everyday life: the hum of electricity, the whir of fans, the creak of wood as other people move about. The outdoors is endlessly full of things to attend to: the wind against leaves and skin, the insects and frogs chirping in the night, the birds waking as the sun nears the horizon.

And the shadow of a fox crossing the road, quick-trotting feet silent as it paused on the other side and glanced at me for a moment before disappearing into the brush.

This was what we had been watching for. We had seen the fox’s tracks in the dirt path, sunken slightly into hardened mud, and wondered if we could spot it and learn what time it walked by our campsite. It could have been any time of night; it could have been during any watch.

I sat there, full of quiet joy, for I had been blessed with the sight of a fox. The thought and planning and waiting paid off. But the watch was not yet done, and so I stayed there as color leaked into the world, green and brown overtaking gray. The pastels of dawn were subtle, but impossible to ignore.

As the sun crested the horizon I stood and made my quiet way back to the campsite, for my watch was done.


Two

I watched the sun set over the Pacific ocean countless times growing up. It’s beautiful. The clouds turn the color of ripe peaches, shadowed in plum; the waves glitter with reflected gold crests and fathomless undersides. The sky turns a deep blue purer than the ever-moving waves ever allow for.

I was in my last year of college when I saw the sun rise over the Atlantic.

My then-girlfriend’s family lived about half an hour south of Boston. I think it was spring break when I stayed with her. I don’t remember the details of time; it wasn’t important then. I know it was near the end of the school year, because we’d known since we began dating that it would end when we graduated and moved to different places; this was not a relationship meant to survive a long-distance relationship.

I’d told her that I’d never seen the sun rise over the ocean but that I wanted to. I’m a morning person; I rise at dawn by biological imperative, and can’t stay up until midnight without a powerful reason (or jetlag!) and effort of will. Being awake for the sunrise isn’t a hardship for me, but it isn’t something I would ask of others.

She suggested that we wake up early and drive to the coast to watch the sun rise. She set the alarm, drove us out in the quiet dark, and led me up to a little park overlooking the sea.

We sat on a bench, her hand in mine, watching the sunrise. Pastel colors: soft pink first, chased by bright gold, blooming into lavender. The sky follows, blue flowing upwards like dye in reverse (for you can’t dye over a darker color the way dawn paints the night). I can’t call it bleaching; that sounds too chemical, too cleansing, and the night is not a stain to remove but simply another part of the day’s cycle.

I don’t remember if we talked. I don’t think we did. I don’t think there was any need to. We were there, and the act of being there—me at her house, her at the park—was an expression of love. That was what mattered, in the moment.


Three

These days, I wake before dawn more often than not.

Depending on the season, the sun may rise while I go through my morning routine, while I’m on my way to work, or after work begins. Right now, dawn begins around when I walk out the door and continues as I drive.

(I have a number of thoughts on this schedule, most of which are about how hard I find it to get out of bed before the sun herself does. I mostly cope by having sun lamps for myself that I use as my primary lighting once I wake up, including one right by my bed. It helps immensely with motivating myself to get up! My body accepts being awake in fake sunlight much better than darkness! It still isn’t as good as the real thing, but it’s enough.)

I’ve watched the sun rise while driving many times over the years. My favorites, generally speaking, are the ones where the moon is also in the sky. I’ve seen crescent moons hiding in the clouds, half-moons resting above the trees, and occasionally a near-full moon glowing bright and defiant on the horizon. They’re glorious, a balm to the soul, a reminder of the beauty of the world.

Earlier this week, I drove to work at dawn. The first glimmers of light stared at me as I left my apartment (it has an east-facing door). The world brightened as I made my way south, the sun cascading across petal-like clouds to turn them rose-red. A lovely, ordinary, drive.

I parked at work, a little early (as usual; I can’t abide arriving late and thus aim to be five minutes early at least), and when I sat up and looked to the west—

It had rained last night. The morning had been dry, though I had seen the shadow of dryness beneath my car. And yet, as the sun crested the horizon, its rays struck the sky at perfect angle to catch the moisture still lingering in the humid air and draw a rainbow against the clouds, tinted pink from the dawn.

As my co-workers and I all emerged from our cars to begin walking to the work-site we pointed it out to each other. We joked about how it definitely wasn’t pointing at the work-site (“No pot of gold there” “Maybe we should drive to where it ends”). It kept coming up throughout the day because it was so beautiful and unexpected.

Photos never do justice to such events, but I took one anyway. A memory, a souvenir, a way to share the joy I felt with everyone else.



It’s not perfect, but it’s enough.